Ukraine from Bolhrad to Sarata

This morning I started quite early to make sure I'll be within 2 days in Odessa.

After a while a met another cyclist. He is from Japan and now travelling for three years with his bike. He started at the east coast of China and was cycling via India, Nepal, Kirghistan, Kazakhstan, ..., Russia to the Ukraine - his intention was cycling back again to Japan, and he was always staying in his tent - so a real great guy!

Here you can see some nice landscape.

A big difference to the other countries I was cycling through was that I felt the people were a bit more shy - which had maybe to do with the bigger language barrier than in the other countries. Ukraine is closer to Russia than the other countries and that's why I guess, that they have less experience in English. Anyhow the people are very warm and friendly, especially when they see you are willed to try at least to speak some words in Russian language.

The roads were in a really bad condition and I felt sometimes a bit frightened especially when the trucks were overtaking and did not speed down at all.

As I couldn't find a hotel I tried out a trick, the Belgian guy Dirk told me. So I went to a restaurant around 6pm had something to eat and asked if I could put my tent in their backyard - and yes, here we go!

The people working in the restaurant were amazingly friendly, we had nice discussions and a real good time. Here you can see me with Viktoria and Ekaterina.

Here with Aleksandr

Crossing Borders...

Still in Romania I saw this nice car and truck parking, as soon a litter box is full, they are building a new one - so it came that after each 5 meters you'll find a litter box, great isn't it?

Here I reached the border to the very young Republic Moldova.

For those who don't know Moldova, I attached a Video: so basically all people living in this small country are wearing funny hats and are listening to punk rock.

Moldova has as well some kms of some Danube arms, as you can see on the following picture.

I liked the landscape over there a lot, the places I was cycling through were somehow similar to the areas I knew from Romania, beside there were less people living and the people living there seemed to me being even more poor than on the other side of the river.
But they were amazingly friendly, I heard twice people saying, that god is loving me - and that I should tell this to my friends as well: So friends, god is also loving YOU!

The agriculture in Moldova was also less sophisticated than in Romania, but I think this is quite good for the nature, when you are having smaller fields - and therefore less monoculture.

The streets in Moldova were the worst I saw so far on the trip. Not only the pavement was in a bad condition, the roads looked as we know from American movies in San Francisco => Up and Down all the time...

Some really nice old vehicles from USSR times were on the road.

As the trains...

After 4 hours cycling, I reached the boarder to the Ukraine.

"Time flies" from Porcupine Tree LIVE

Last Day in Romania

Yesterday I was not too happy about the fact, that I couldn't cross borders to Ukraine directly from Tulcea to Izmail.

But as EU does not have a common border convention like they have with Switzerland - I had to do some 80 kms extra (in the wrong direction) => so x2 => 160 km.

The road was as well not really flat ;-) But fine keeps me in a good shape.

Here again the Danube.

Here you can see something really rare: a bee-eater => download the picture and zoom in, then you will be able to admire its beautiful colors of its feathers.

Here was the colony of the bee-eaters right next to the road.

Before I was crossing the Danube towards Galati, I saw this nice blue house with thatched roof.

Galati is a town of around 300.000 people and one big company Arcelor-Mittal. As they are doing worse and worse due the fact, that most of the steel production is nowadays in China, people are here suffering as well from unemployment.

In the evening I was sitting together with two nice students from Galati. We were talking quite a while about many different topics. One issue shocked me a bit, that even people with professional qualification are earning as long they are salaried with companies less than 1.000 € a month. That's why they definitely want to go abroad after they have finished the studies.

Who has the benefit out of that? The companies, who can hire Engineers and other qualified staff for almost nothing, and no one from politics takes really care about it...

When we think about European crisis, we only think about Greece, Spain, Portugal => so countries which have the Euro, but no one talks about Hungary, Bulgaria and Romania even the economical facts are here worse!

Again a song: Porcupine Tree "radioactive toy" LIVE

Danube Delta

Today was a relaxing day. I organized some things and went by speed boat to the Danube Delta, where I had a great time.

The nature was really amazing, I visited a lot of birds: like pelicans, ducks and many other through binoculars - so I hope you are fine with my words and agree that I couldn't share pictures from pelicans ;-(

Good individual tours could be booked here: http://www.egretamica.ro/

I even had time to go swimming in the Delta. It is really unbelievable, that we do have such great nature in Europe. So if you have the chance, go for visit the Delta. I would recommend to take some more time I did and do this trip with canoes, take your tent and a map of the delta and spend at least 3-4 days there.

Final kms on the Danube Track to Tulcea

After a very long sleep I started around 10am this morning and passed a very nice lake around 10kms after Harsova. The temperatures were not so high that morning, but there was still strong front wind.

After a while I passed an huge wind park, which was part wise still under construction. Enercon and ABB build it so far I could see - the wind park will provide 99 MW (google for it). Ok EU is offering sponsorship, but I assume in Romania they do not have the consumers for this amounts of Energy.

So some people will probably earn a shit hole of money.

Beside huge energy projects I saw some small ducks that day.

Beside Orthodox and Catholic churches, more and more mosques were in the small villages - and the people were living together in a friendly way.

I like this picture very much.

Yes and after 100km I reached Tulcea in the early afternoon, cause the wind direction changed after 1pm so cycling was not so challenging anymore.

Beside horse-carts, some old Dacias, some Renaults I could see many SUVs on the road. I guess that more and more Romanians are discovering sports, that means they have to transport their golf-clubs, tennis rackets, ... somehow and of course you couldn't do this in an ordinary car. Sport Utility Vehicles were build to transport the equipment!

But back to the story. Tulcea looked quite charming, had somehow an international flair ;-) And some nice old buildings as well.

Ok to be honest I am using Tulcea:

• as official final destination of the Danube Cycle Path to finalize the first part of the trip => Prost!
• to be close to the Ukrainian border,
• do a boat tour tomorrow to the Danube Delta

Beside old buildings I would like to introduce my new house bank to you. CEO is Mr. Duke (Graf) Dracula!

To say goodbye from my crow Jacob I decided to offer you a song called "Dead Wing" from Porcupine Tree.

F**** the police

Sad but true, my friend Jacob died after less than 24 hours. I think he was too weak and was maybe already lying too long next to the road before I picked it up - shame.

But live has to continue, even we are loosing good friends...

I started that morning in Olenita and had a clear destination in mind: Constanta, I wanted to reach it two days later, that's why I tried to speed up a bit, which was hard, cause of heavy winds from the front and extreme hot temperatures - anyway that day I reached my destination which was Fetesti.

But I will go a bit more in details now:

There were nice shallow lakes next to the road, where many fishermen tried their best to enhance their meals with some proteins.

These shallow lakes were connected with some kind of drains with one of the various arms of the Danube. In these drains you could always see cattle, which needed also to cool down a bit.

That day I was cycling almost 20kms with Peter, who lived in a small town close to Calarasi. He was visiting his brother-in-law to get 10 small chicken from him.
Peter does not have a proper job like most of the people living here - sometimes he works as a brick layer, when friends are building houses, or he tries to get jobs in Germany or Austria. These jobs help him to make sure he can buy wood in winter to heat up his house and buy something special for his family e.g. on x-mas or new-years eve.

In contrast to most unemployed people in West European countries, people like Peter have some animals like chicken, pigs and sheep at their places, and they are growing vegetables and fruits - so that they don't need to spend too much money on food.

He was amazingly friendly to me, after I invited him to a beer (I had a sugar water - cause it was around 10 am) he had to invite me afterwards for a sugar water as well.

Some kms before Calarasi, there were huge industrial ruins, which were from coal power plants. It was impressive to see these buildings - it might look that way when mankind left the planet.

Beside ruins there was a nice, wooden Catholic church next to the road. Peter was orthodox, like most of the people living in Romania, too.

When I took this picture, I honestly thought Romania is somehow like heaven. Horses and cows are on huge areas peaceful grassing - like in wild west movies and all kind of fruit is growing wild - at least in summer time it seems relaxed.

Another wild west picture - in the back you can again see one of the Danube arms.

A nice alley...

Not only me was suffering from the heavy front winds.

That guy had in contrast to me a very soft seat.

Ok, now back to the story, that evening I reached Fetesti how I planned to do. The next day would only a be 70km ride to Constanta. But it came different... As there is only one bridge how to cross the river, I obviously took the freeway (not the first time) - just one km on it, a police car with siren stopped me and told me some stupid stories. I had to accept it and drive 70 km further north to cross the river there - you can imagine how my motivation looked that day.

I decided, not to go to Constanta, but move instead further northern towards the Danube Delta and do a longer stop in Odessa Ukraine instead.

One last sentence on that: Riding on National Roads is much more dangerous than an freeways.

I have really no clue, for what these guys were drilling for - water definitely not, the Danube was only 500m away => maybe fracking?! so the people who like conspiracy theories are welcome to launch some rumors ;-)

When I saw that, it thought I would dream: there were really rice fields next to the road! At least the storchs were happy about it.

Beside rice fields, many huge sunflower fields, corn fields were there - so this area of Romania is extremely stamped by agriculture - from that point of view it is not astonishing, that no wild living animals, beside birds and frogs were present in this area.

I love the clouds here in the east...

The last picture of the day is addicted to the wasting of EU appropriation - there are two 10x5 m LED displays installed in Harsova to show e.g. soccer matches like now.